Self-Portrait Pencil and watercolor
Born in Suffolk, John Constable was best
know for his Romantic landscape painting of his hometown, Dedham Vale, which is
now known as “Constable Country”. “I should paint my own places best”, he wrote
to his friend John Fisher in 1821, “painting is but another word for feeling”.
To understand Constable’s art, it is
valuable to see where he stood in relation to his contemporary artists. The
greatest artists who made the English School of landscape painting famous
throughout the world were born within a few years of each other. John Constable
was born on June 11th, 1776, when Joseph Mallord William Turner and
Thomas Girtin were one-year-olds and Jogn Crome was a boy of eight. These
artists have distinct English character in their paintings, distinct from the
seventeenth century Dutch School or nineteenth-century French Impressionist
School. Two general features are shared in common. One is the simple faith in
nature, that nature is governed by invariable laws. To be natural meant to be
reasonable. They thought nature is open to humans for contemplation and
intuition. The second feature is light as a means of expression. Constable
thought that light should be all natural and not artificial.
Constable’s most well-known painting was The
Hay Wain (1821).
The Hay Wain (1821)
The full-size sketch of the painting:
Let’s compare the sketch with the final
drawing. The horse on the shore was deleted in the finish drawing to avoid
distraction of viewer’s attention. And the dog on the shore looking at the hay
wain was directing the viewer’s attention to it. Also in the finish drawing, a
fisherman appeared in the grass to balance with the women who is washing
clothes on the left. All of these details aim to make the only focus on the hay
wain. The painting also imbedded several distinct features of Constable. The
clouds, for example, was very realistic. Constable studied the clouds under all
kinds of weather. One writer commented his clouds, “Seeing Constable’s dark
clouds make me want to put on my rain coat.” The water in the painting also
seemed to be slowly flowing. The white dots on the tree shed all the light onto
the middle of the painting. Using the full-size sketch to draw the same
landscape over and over again, Constable completed this masterpiece of a
landscape that we all seem to know.
Another masterpiece of Constable was
Wivenhoe Park (1816).
Wivenhoe Park (1816)
Wivenhoe Park was painted in his early
career and I was very impressed by it when I visited National Gallery of Art in
Washington DC. The detail of the painting was delicate and the red man in the
boat was the highlight of the painting, making the whole picture complete and
stopping the viewer’s attention from drifting away. Constable also rescaled the
scene, resembling today’s panoramic camera. But the most important of all,
seeing Constable’s landscape paintings gives me a scene of serenity. Through
his painting, he brought us into the English countryside as if we are seeing
the cows and water right before us. Constable liked to draw familiar things,
but through the familiar landscape that we all know, he suggested a “relook”
and it makes the familiar interesting.
Constable married his childhood friend
Maria Bicknell in1816 and together they had 7 children.
Portrait of Maria Bicknell (1816)
In 1828, Maria died of tuberculosis and
Constable was intensely saddened. He wrote to his brother, "hourly do I
feel the loss of my departed Angel—God only knows how my children will be
brought up...the face of the World is totally changed to me." After the
death of his beloved wife, the style of Constable’s painting changed.
Hadleigh Castle: The Mouth of the Thames-
Morning, after a stormy night (1829)
In the painting, the dark clouds covered
the entire sky, only a little light escaped. The ruins of the castle and the
shepherd all indicated a sense of sadness and loneliness.
Stonehenge (1835)
Double rainbow often appeared in Constable’s
later artworks. The rainbows seem to represent Constable and Maria—although beautiful
together, they could never come across each other any more.
Works Cited:
Works Cited:
Key, S. (1948). John Constable, his life
and work. London: Phoenix House.
Xiao gu liao hui hua (Di 1 ban. ed.).
(2014). Beijing: Citic City.
Portrait of Maria Bicknell. (n.d.).
Retrieved March 3, 2015, from http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-constable/portrait-of-maria-bicknell-1816
The Hay Wain. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3,
2015, from http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-constable/the-hay-wain-1821
Wivenhoe Park. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3,
2015, from http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-constable/wivenhoe-park-1816
Studies for 'The Hay Wain', by John
Constable, 1821. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3, 2015, from http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/constables-studies-for-the-hay-wain/
Self Portrait. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3,
2015, from http://www.john-constable.org/Self-Portrait.html
Stonehenge. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3,
2015, from http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-constable/stonehenge-1835
Hadleigh Castle. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3,
2015, from http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-constable/hadleigh-castle-1829
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